Roberto Ruiz Oliva I Granada (EFE).- Resistance against social inequalities was already a common practice in prehistoric societies, in which values such as community, solidarity or reciprocity were a priority for thousands of years successfully defended.
Studies of the Research Group of the University of Granada “GEA. Material culture and social identity in Recent Prehistory in the south of the Iberian Peninsula” give a good example of this reality, as Professor Gonzalo Aranda, from the Department of Prehistory and Archeology, explained to EFE.
This situation, not exempt from social tensions, began to break down in what we know as Bronze Age societies, with the clearest case involving the so-called “argaric” societies in the Iberian Peninsula.
These are communities settled in the southeast of the peninsula -in the current provinces of Almería, Granada and Murcia- some 4,000 years ago and which led different changes and cultural innovations.
The new funerary rituals that began to be individual were located inside the towns and presented significant variability in their trousseau.
hitherto unknown resistance
In this way, there were from people without any object to those -the least- who accumulated significant amounts of trousseau, among which metallic objects stood out, many of them made of gold and silver of high social value.
This evidence has been considered a clear manifestation of societies fragmented into social classes with strong inequalities, Aranda has indicated.
The GEA investigations show that this situation provoked, however, a “resistance reaction hitherto unknown”.
Research work carried out in different megalithic necropolises shows that, at the same time that individual burials began, the reuse of megalithic monuments typical of previous Neolithic and Chalcolithic societies intensified.
Especially significant is the case of the necropolis of Los Eriales, located in Morelábor (Granada), excavated at the end of the 19th century. And made up of 32 dolmens, megalithic monuments formed by burial chambers and inside which collective burials were made.
From the study of the human remains found in several of these graves, the date of death of the people buried there has been dated using carbon 14. The dates obtained in this way show surprisingly that the funerary activity took place during the Argaric Bronze Age.
During this period two very different funerary practices coincided, one individual and novel and the other ancient and collective.
The ritual, the professor pointed out, emphasizes individuality and inequality. In contrast to another that emphasizes tradition and the community.
Strong opposition to social inequality
“Attempts to consolidate unequal social relations would have met with strong opposition. That he would have found in the reuse of collective ritual spaces the perfect setting to manifest his resilience”, he explained.
The scale and intensity reached in the reuse of megalithic graves can be considered, therefore, the material expression of the rejection of social inequalities. That it was “successful” if one takes into account the return to much more collective organizational forms that characterize “post-sargaric” societies.
The end of the “Argaric” societies around 3,500 years ago meant the revitalization of more collective societies. And here, once again, the reuse of megalithic tombs remained a highly relevant cultural aspect.
“As exemplified by the societies of the Peninsular Recent Prehistory, the development of much more egalitarian societies is not only desirable but also possible”, this expert has concluded.
A reality that shows, far from what one might think, that resistance against social inequalities represents a struggle with a long (pre) history.
